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Assyrian Christians Object to Exclusion in Iraq
Homeland
June 07, 06
Daniel González
The Arizona Republic
Mona Oshana sells real estate for a living, but the topic
of conversation doesn't have to be the Valley's cooling market
to get the Glendale resident going.
Bring up the plight of Assyrian Christians in Iraq and she
can go on for hours.
The Assyrian Christians are the indigenous people of Iraq,
Oshana says, comparable to Native Americans in the United States.
After years of being persecuted by Saddam Hussein's tyrannical
regime, they were hoping to have their voices heard under Iraq's
new democratic government, the one the United States helped create.
But so far, that hasn't really happened, says Oshana, an Assyrian
Christian whose family fled Iraq in 1977, when she was 8. Assyrian
Christians continue to be politically marginalized and persecuted,
she said.
"It's almost like we lost one oppressor to get another
one," Oshana says.
That's why Assyrian Christians in the Valley are determined
to help their countrymen back home, she said.
Today about 30 will join others from California, New York,
Illinois and Michigan in Washington, D.C. They plan to demonstrate
in front of the Iraqi Embassy and the U.S. Capitol to call attention
to the continued challenges facing Iraq's Assyrian Christian
population.
"We want the U.S. to take action," said Glendale
resident Sargon Zomaya, 57, one of those traveling to Washington.
With about 15,000 Assyrians Christians, the Phoenix area has
the fastest-growing Assyrian Christian community in the country.
Most have relocated here over the past 10 to 15 years from the
Chicago and Detroit areas.
In helping Iraq establish a democratic government, the United
States has focused most of its efforts on striking a political
balance between Iraq's three largest ethnic groups, the Shiites,
the Sunnis and the Kurds, overshadowing the Assyrians, said Steven
Cook, an expert on Arab politics at the Council on Foreign Relations,
a think tank in Washington, D.C.
He doubts today's protests will make much difference.
"The United States' policymakers have larger issues to
worry about than to what's happening to a relatively small community,"
Cook said.
With a population of about 800,000 people, Assyrian Christians
make up just 3 percent of Iraq's 27 million population.
Because of a rise in Islamic extremism and political persecution,
roughly 100,000 Iraqi Christians have fled the country or have
been displaced since the start of the U.S.-led invasion in March
2003, according to Michael Youash, project director for the Iraq
Sustainable Democracy Project in Washington, D.C.
"The straw that broke the camel's back," Youash
said, was the recent appointment of Iraq's cabinet ministers.
None was a member of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, even though
the political party garnered 79 percent of the votes cast from
Assyrians both inside and outside Iraq during Iraq's parliamentary
elections in 2005, he said.
The only Christian appointed to a minister's post came from
the Kurdish Democratic Party. Most Assyrian Christians consider
that unacceptable, accusing the Kurdish Democratic Party of being
responsible for driving Christians from their homelands in northern
Iraq and discriminating against them, Youash said.
Though Assyrian Christians are a small minority in Iraq, they
make up the largest proportion of Iraq's exile community, numbering
between 250,00 and 400,000, Youash said.
By organizing demonstrations, Youash said, the community hopes
to push the U.S. government to use its "diplomatic muscle
to indicate its dissatisfaction with the political marginalization
of the Assyrians."
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